What the Drought Cost.
A dry year, priced. What it took off the yield, what it added to the input bill, and what it did to the ground for the year after.
What it is about.
Drought is reported as weather and experienced as arithmetic. This episode does the arithmetic: hectares, tonnes, the price that season, and the two fields that were written off before July.
The second half is more interesting than the first. A dry year does damage that does not show up until the following spring, and almost nobody accounts for it in the year it happened.
Gerald has seen more of these than anybody else on the farm and is characteristically economical about it.
Where things are in it.
Timestamps are in the feed as chapter marks, so an app that supports them will let you skip straight to the bit you came for.
The yield
Tonnes lost, field by field.
The input bill
Which went up while the yield went down.
Next spring
The cost nobody books in the right year.
What you can actually do
Less than the internet thinks.
The details.
Episode 07
- Title
- What the Drought Cost
- Published
- 4 August 2026Fortnightly, on a Tuesday.
- Length
- 44 min
- Guest
- Gerald CooperDrystone waller and long memory
- Listens
- 31,074To 30 August 2026.
Access
- Transcript
- Published with the episodeSearchable.
- Download
- YesIt is an audio file.
- Cost
- NothingNo tier, no early access.
- Chapter marks
- YesThe four above, in the feed.
Every broadcast and every episode described here is illustrative. This is an unofficial demonstration build: no recording exists, nothing streams, and no guest named on this site has agreed to anything.
Where this goes next.
Almost every episode has a written counterpart, because an argument that only exists in audio is an argument nobody can quote.
The rest of the series.
One Hundred and Forty-Four Pounds
The first year’s profit, where the number came from, and why nobody who understood the arithmetic was remotely surprised by…
The Sixteen-Mile Radius
The planning condition that decides what the farm shop is allowed to sell, read out loud and then argued with…
Lagering Takes Six Weeks
Why the beer costs what it costs, told by somebody who has thrown a batch away and would like to…
We Completely Cocked Up
The cider recall, the statement that said exactly that, and why the shortest crisis statement in the file was also…
There Is No Telephone
Why a business with three million followers has no telephone number, and what happens to the people who wanted one.
The Lemon Problem
A pub where every ingredient is British, and the hour-long argument about a gin and tonic that has no lemon…
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